Locational Astrology
Astro Cartography
Fictional study examples, not calculated planetary lines. These examples cannot establish which city suits you or guide relocation decisions.
Your Details
What are you moving for?
Fictional study examples, not calculated planetary lines. These examples cannot establish which city suits you or guide relocation decisions.
The Ten Lines
☉Sun
Gift: Visibility, vitality, being taken seriously
Cost: Ego inflation and burnout in equal measure
- AC — You are seen here — for better and worse. Identity sharpens fast.
- DC — Partners outshine you; you are defined by who you are with.
- MC — Career recognition, public role, promotion territory.
- IC — Roots, family, a place that feels like a home base.
☽Moon
Gift: Belonging, emotional ease, feeling held
Cost: Nostalgia, dependency, difficulty leaving
- AC — Instant familiarity. Strangers read you as safe.
- DC — You attract carers — and people who need caring for.
- MC — A public life built on feeling and care work.
- IC — The deepest 'home' line on any chart.
☿Mercury
Gift: Clear thinking, study, writing, useful contacts
Cost: Restlessness and permanent low-grade busyness
- AC — Talkative, curious, mentally quick here.
- DC — Business partnerships and negotiation.
- MC — Media, teaching, writing careers.
- IC — Study at home; a place for finishing a book.
♀Venus
Gift: Love, pleasure, beauty, being liked
Cost: Indulgence and drift
- AC — You look and feel better here. People are warm.
- DC — The classic romance relocation line.
- MC — Careers in art, design, hospitality.
- IC — A lovely home; hard to be productive.
♂Mars
Gift: Drive, courage, physical energy, ambition
Cost: Conflict, accidents, an unnecessarily short fuse
- AC — Assertive, athletic, combative.
- DC — Partners are challenging; open conflict.
- MC — Fast career progress through effort and fight.
- IC — Domestic friction. Not a rest line.
♃Jupiter
Gift: Luck, growth, teachers, opportunity
Cost: Overreach, excess, taking the size for granted
- AC — Generous, expansive, optimistic version of you.
- DC — Benefactors and generous partners.
- MC — The strongest single line for career expansion.
- IC — A large, comfortable domestic life.
♄Saturn
Gift: Mastery, discipline, structures that last
Cost: Loneliness, weight, slow going
- AC — You feel older and more serious here.
- DC — Committed but demanding relationships.
- MC — Long careers built the hard way — real authority.
- IC — Heavy domestic responsibility.
♅Uranus
Gift: Freedom, invention, sudden change
Cost: Instability, nothing stays put
- AC — You become the outsider, and enjoy it.
- DC — Unconventional relationships, sudden meetings.
- MC — Tech, activism, unusual work.
- IC — Frequent moves; never quite settles.
♆Neptune
Gift: Imagination, spirituality, artistry, compassion
Cost: Confusion, escapism, unclear boundaries
- AC — Dreamlike. You blur at the edges here.
- DC — Idealised partners; disillusion follows.
- MC — Film, music, healing, charity.
- IC — Retreat — good for a sabbatical, bad for admin.
♇Pluto
Gift: Power, depth, total transformation
Cost: Obsession, crisis, no half-measures
- AC — Intense presence; people react strongly.
- DC — Fated, consuming relationships.
- MC — Power in the work — and power struggles.
- IC — Ancestral material surfaces here.
These lines are generated as a consistent study model from your birth date, not from a precise ephemeris and birth time. Use the page to learn what each planetary line means, and treat any city ranking as reflection rather than relocation advice.
In short
See which planetary lines run through thirty-six world cities, what each gives and costs on the AC, DC, MC and IC, and rank places by intent.
- Neutral cities are underrated. Being off your lines is often the easiest place to rest and choose freely.
- Saturn lines are unpleasant and productive. People do their best long work there and rarely enjoy it at the time.
- Neptune on an angle is famous for lovely holidays and terrible admin. Do not sign anything important there.
- Nobody moves for astrology alone. Use the line as a lens on the practical reasons you already have.
- Planet
- Sign
- House
- Aspect
10
Planetary lines
4
Angles
36
Cities
1976
Technique coined
Origins
Locational astrology is old — Ptolemy assigned countries to signs in the Tetrabiblos, and chorography, the mapping of places to zodiacal rulers, ran through medieval and Renaissance practice.
The modern form is recent and named. Jim Lewis coined 'Astro*Carto*Graphy' in 1976, drawing lines across a world map wherever a natal planet would have been rising, setting, culminating or at the lowest point had you been born there. Michael Erlewine's Local Space and later relocation techniques extend the same idea.
The interpretive claim is modest when stated carefully: relocating does not change your chart, it changes which planets sit on the angles — the parts of a chart astrologers read as most visible in ordinary life. Whether that corresponds to anything is unproven, but as a way of asking what you actually want from a move, it is a good question generator.
The Method
Name the intent first
Love, money, quiet, recognition. Astrocartography answers a specific ask far better than 'where should I live'.
Check which angle
The same planet reads very differently on the Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven and IC. The angle is half the meaning.
Look at what is in orb
Within a few degrees of longitude counts. A city sitting between lines is genuinely neutral ground.
Read the cost with the gift
Every line has both. A strong Jupiter line brings opportunity and the overreach that goes with it.
Visit before you move
The classic advice from Lewis himself. Two weeks on a line tells you more than any chart.
Practice Notes
- Neutral cities are underrated. Being off your lines is often the easiest place to rest and choose freely.
- Saturn lines are unpleasant and productive. People do their best long work there and rarely enjoy it at the time.
- Neptune on an angle is famous for lovely holidays and terrible admin. Do not sign anything important there.
- Nobody moves for astrology alone. Use the line as a lens on the practical reasons you already have.
Myth & Truth
Commonly said
A bad line means disaster.
In practice
It describes emphasis and difficulty, not fate. Plenty of people build excellent lives on Saturn and Pluto lines.
Commonly said
Moving changes your birth chart.
In practice
It does not. Relocation only rotates which planets fall on the angles of the chart as read from the new place.
Commonly said
Astrocartography is ancient.
In practice
The mapped-line technique dates from 1976, though the idea of places having planetary rulers is much older.
Commonly said
You must live on a line to benefit.
In practice
Being within a few hundred kilometres is generally treated as sufficient, and many practitioners work with much wider zones.
Questions Readers Ask
What are AC, DC, MC and IC lines?
The four chart angles: where a planet is rising, setting, at the highest point of the sky, or at the lowest. Each puts the planet's themes into a different area of life.
Do I need a birth time?
Precise professional astrocartography does. This page uses a consistent model from your birth date to teach the technique, so treat the placements as illustrative.
Which line is best for money?
Jupiter and Sun on the Midheaven are the conventional answers, with Saturn MC for slow-built authority. Context matters more than the label.
Should I relocate on this reading?
No. This is offered for reflection and entertainment. Make life decisions on practical grounds and professional advice.
What changes an astrology interpretation?
A sign description is only one layer of a chart. The planet describes the symbolic function, the sign its style, the house the area of life, and aspects its relationship with other placements. Read these layers together rather than treating a single placement as a complete personality assessment. Astrology is an interpretive tradition, not a scientifically established method of prediction.
Birth time and location matter especially for the Ascendant and houses. If the time is unknown, avoid firm house interpretations and check whether the Moon changed signs that day. Different house systems and tropical or sidereal zodiacs can produce different results; compare charts using the same settings before assuming one is wrong.
Turn a reading into a question you can check against experience. Instead of concluding that a transit guarantees a job change, ask which responsibilities are changing and what practical options you have. Keep decisions about health, money and relationships grounded in evidence and direct conversations.
As a worked example, Venus in a sign offers a symbolic style of relating, while its house points to an area where that theme is explored. An aspect to Saturn might be interpreted as a contrast between affection and responsibility. Write down both possibilities before selecting one: dependable care, or excessive caution. The chart alone cannot decide which describes your life.
Does this interpretation still fit when I consider the whole chart and my actual circumstances?